Marianne Boruch wins $100,000 Jackson Poetry Prize as judges hail human genius in AI age

NEW YORK (AP) — A poet renowned for her insights into the natural world and our inner lives has received a $100,000 award. Marianne Boruch is this year’s winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize for “exceptional talent.”

Judges praised Boruch’s work, including such collections as “Bestiary Dark” and “The Anti-Grief” as affirmations of human genius amid the rise of AI. The prize is overseen by the nonprofit organization Poets & Writers.

“Marianne Boruch renders luminous the expanse and reach of human thought,” the prize citation, released Wednesday by Poets & Writers, reads in part. “In an age of simulated intelligence, Boruch sets to tremble the whole of our collective knowledge where the soul, as she suggests in several poems, is a vastness of wanting and boundless curiosity.”

Boruch, 75, is a resident of West Lafayette, Indiana, who taught for decades at Purdue University, where she founded the school’s MFA creative writing program. Previous winners of the Jackson prize, established 20 years ago with a gift from the Liana Foundation, include former U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo and the current laureate, Arthur Sze.